The sermon explores the concept of giving as an act of worship and the basis for giving in the Bible. It delves into the generosity of God and how His generosity should transform His worshipers into generous people. The sermon covers the principles of giving in both the Old and New Testaments, emphasizing cheerful giving and the enlargement of the heart. It concludes with practical applications and encourages a large-hearted, abundant giving among the congregation.

To 2 Corinthians chapter nine and find verse six. 2 Corinthians nine, verse six. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey, word of God. Saint Corinthians nine, I'm gonna start in verse five actually, no I'll start in verse six, how about that? But this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you also having all sufficiency in all things may have an abundance for every good work. As it is written, he has dispersed abroad He has given to the poor his righteousness endures forever The grass withers The flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for these wonderful words.

They're so encouraging, they're so helpful. Pray, Lord, that you would make these words so holy, so heavy, so true, so helpful today among your people. Lord, we're just so grateful for your generosity toward us. Amen. Please be seated.

So today is an unusual topical message on this matter of giving, giving of our tithes and offerings of everything that we have. The Bible makes it clear though that giving is an act of worship and this is really the theological category, sort of the heading over all of what we are dealing with today is in the category of worship. We worship a generous God who seeks worshipers who would worship him in spirit and in truth. And this means that God's worshipers, as they worship Him, as they give their lives to Him, that they're transformed into His likeness and they become like Him. And this is the basis for all giving in the Bible, that God is the one who is so generous and we walk in his ways.

Of course we have this sort of enshrined in our church covenant. If you want to become a member at this church, you know, you enter into a covenant and Part of that covenant has to do with this matter of worship It's a way that we worship God together as a church It's what what sort of unifies one of the things that unifies and binds us together is that we worship God With our money and so our our church covenant reads like this We will contribute cheerfully and regularly to the support of the ministry The expenses of the church the relief of the poor and the spread of the gospel through all nations. And so this is something that we design that characterizes our church. It's just a biblical category. We didn't make it up.

So why are we giving a message like this today? Well, first of all, we haven't given a message like this in who knows how long. And I think your elders believe that we've neglected a really important part of church life and we haven't spoken about it. The other thing is that we actually have a church of full of givers. We're not giving this message because the church is in trouble.

We need to cough it up today. That's not why this message is being given today. We're really here just to speak about this great wonder that we have as creatures to come together and to give of what we have been given. And it really is a pleasure to do such a thing. And this whole idea of giving a percentage of all that we've been given is something that is found all over the Bible and we're gonna walk through it.

You have an outline in front of you I'm gonna walk through scripture all the way from the beginning from Genesis and work through this whole matter. But it's clear too that the early church, when they gathered together on the first day of the week, they gathered to give. In 1 Corinthians 6, 2, we read, on the first day of the week, let each one of you lay something aside, storing up as he may prosper. This was the normal practice of the early New Testament church. But all of this was really founded in a greater matter, and that is the generosity of God and how worthy He is that we would worship Him.

I think that everything that is said in the Bible about giving really, you know, can be understood under Jesus Christ quoting the first commandment in Matthew 24, 37 when he said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Well that really is the beginning of giving. And that is the love of God and the love of neighbor.

It's giving actually accomplishes both of those things. We know that God is generous. In James, we learn that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of lights. The apostle Paul says, what do you have that you were not given? In Matthew 5.45, the Lord tells us that he makes his son to rise on the evil and the good, and he causes his reign to fall on the just and on the unjust.

In Acts 17, 25, we learn that God has given life, it's God who's given life to all things, not some strange, amorphous, you know, undefined power of evolutionary wisdom. But God does this. God is the one who gives every good gift. And of course, the greatest work of kindness toward mankind is the giving of his son. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life.

This is God's kindness toward sinners, toward rebels. And God is so kind. God is large-hearted. And man on his own is tight-fisted, on the other hand. Man on his own does not have a large heart.

Man on his own has a contracted heart. Selfishness shrinks a man's heart. Selfishness is always asking, what's in it for me? How am I being served? Selfishness is always asking how are people treating me?

But there's nothing that will enlarge the heart of a human being than the new birth, where the heart is changed. That's the whole idea of the new birth, that God takes your heart of stone, your pinch truncated, selfish, self-driven, self-focused, me, me, me heart, turning that hard heart into a heart of flesh and The Bible says that actually it's the Word of God that enlarges the heart as well and you know, we're gonna be reading all kinds of scripture today and if the Spirit of God is moving in your heart these scriptures will enlarge your heart. David said it in Psalm 119 he says I will run the course of your commandments, for you will enlarge my heart. When you run in the commandments of God, your heart is enlarged. That's the idea That's in the Bible.

And that word that David uses in Psalm 119 for enlarge, it means roomy, it means broad, it means big. You've heard of big-hearted people. They do exist. I've known some of them. But the large-hearted are not the tight and narrow-hearted because they are becoming like God who's a provider.

God who's a giver of all gifts. God, who gives grace to the unworthy. You know, over the last couple of years, in our ministry at Church and Family Life, we've been recording the life stories of the preachers that come and preach at our conference. Steve Lawson, Joe Beeke, Paul Washer, different guys like that. And all of them, everybody who preaches at our conference, you can hear Paul Carrington, you can hear Robert Bosley's life story.

But here's the deal, when we take these life stories, I mean these are eminent preachers, these are remarkably helpful brothers in the Lord. But when you find out where they came from, most of them came from such a brokenness you wouldn't even believe it. And there they are clothed and in their right minds preaching the word of God and walking in it. It's such a beautiful thing. It's probably one of the most encouraging things we've done over the last couple years is just to listen to these men tell their life stories.

So they're on our website, but God God gives grace He's large-hearted and He's a counselor. He's a father. He's Jehovah Jireh. He's the one who provides he's the God who heals He's a dwelling place. He's he is so many things that could be characterized as large-hearted.

God is generous. God is a generous God. He wants to make a generous people. And by the way, he wants to make this people a generous people. More generous going forward than we were before.

This is the beauty of the word of God. God comes and he lets his word out and enlarges our hearts, it changes us. You know, we're a church that's being sanctified, we're not perfect. We need more, We need more grace, we need more wisdom, we need more large heartedness. I do, absolutely I do.

I've been so convicted by this message. I was telling Deborah this this morning, she said, well, you just keep preaching this to yourself. That's what I need. We all need the Word of God. God is the giver of all good gifts.

You know Solomon prayed to God and in 1 Kings 429 and God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much and guess what? Largeness of heart. God gave Solomon largeness of heart. He desired it, and God gave it to him. I mean, maybe that's your desire today.

You want largeness of heart, like you haven't. Your heart's been too pinched and hard and withholding. Too much focused on yourself. But God wants to deliver us from all of these things too. In many ways, you know, what God is always doing, he's always changing our viewpoint about two things, ourselves and himself.

And what God does with his people through his word is he takes takers and makes them givers. He takes keepers and makes them dispensers. He makes people who are not just depositories of all good things, but dispensers of all good things. This is what God does. And so I want to give you a thumbnail sketch of the sweep of scripture during these various periods.

I have listed here, you know, the beginning, the patriarchal age, the Mosaic period, the historical and poetic period, and then the New Testament. I'm gonna run you through those, you know, a little too fast, but I want you to get a sense of what the Bible says about this whole subject. Before we get there, you know, the landscape of giving in the church today is kinda low. It's hard to know exactly, but some researchers say that non-religious people give about 1.1% and then religious people give about 2.5%. It's not so much.

And I don't know how to dissect how all these surveys were done, but that's pretty much the common thing you'll read out there. I'm sure it varies from church to church and maybe even denomination to denomination, but whatever it is, is it enough? Do I give enough, do you give enough? We're gonna hear the word tithing a lot because that word shows up only twice in the New Testament but lots of times in the Old Testament. I like what Randy Alcorn says about tithing.

Tithing is the training wheels of financial faithfulness. The training wheels. It kind of gets you going, you know, in a in the right direction. Okay let's look at the Bible. You have on your outline the beginning, the first appearance of this matter of giving is in Genesis four, one through seven.

This is Cain and Abel, they're bringing their offerings to the Lord. And it says this, in the process of time, Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord, Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. So this is the first occasion where someone is taking out of what they have earned and sacrificing it to God. And then if you get to the patriarchal age, well just by the way, one of these givers was large-hearted and the other was tight-fisted. That's really the point of the story.

One really did not have a heart toward God and the other did. And then in the patriarchal age this is from creation to the Exodus and in the period of the Pentateuch. The first mention of giving or tithing actually literally in the Bible is when Abraham gives or Abraham gives a tenth of all his spoils to the high priest of Salem, Melchizedek, this is the first mention of giving as an act of worship outside of Genesis chapter four and Melchizedek very interestingly, what does he he brings bread and wine? What does that make you think of? You know what that makes you think of.

He brings bread and wine. This is the worship. This is for the worship of God. And then Abraham gives 10%. It says here, and he gave him a tithe of all.

Abraham had just been victorious in war over five kings and he brought back the spoils and of everything that he brought back he gave a tenth to Melchizedek. And this is corroborated in Hebrews chapter seven, verse four, where, I'll just read it. Now consider how this great man was, to whom even the patriarch Abraham gave a tenth of the spoils. And indeed, those who are the sons of Levi, who received the priesthood, have a commandment to receive tithes from the people according to the law, that is, from their brethren, that they have come from the loins of Abraham. So there is a law for the priests to collect tithes, and there was a law for the people to give them.

So that's what we read here at the beginning. You know in Genesis chapter 28 verse 18 through 22 we learn that Jacob also gave a tenth of everything, everything that he had. And this was a manifestation of an enlarged heart. God had enlarged his heart. How?

Through his commandments. God gave a commandment to the priests who collected and God gave a commandment to the people to give it. Through the commandments the hearts were enlarged. So let's go to the Mosaic period. You've got lots of passages of Scripture listed here.

We'll just dance around some of them. But here when you read these verses you'll notice the word tithe and there were three tithes during the days of Moses for the service of the tabernacle and then later actually for the temple. And there are three major passages, Leviticus 27, 30 through 33, numbers 18, 21, and Deuteronomy 14, 22. Here's Deuteronomy 14, 22. You shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year.

Now, that's sort of a summary of it. What God had done in Israel is to establish three tithes, three points of giving. The first was the Levitical tithe, and this is in Numbers 18, 21. The Levites stood between Israel and God offering sacrifices and also instructing the people. That was a little the Levitical tithe, that was tithe, that was 10%.

And then there was the festival tithe, that was the second tithe, Deuteronomy 1422, and this is distinguished from the Levitical tithe, And then there was the poor tithe. So you had, first of all, the Levitical tithe, 10 percent, then you had the festival tithe, 10 percent, and then you had the poor tithe. That was 10 percent every three years. So if you add them up, the Jews were commanded by God, the priests were commanded and the people were commanded to bring in 23.3%, if you add it up, 10 plus 10 plus 10 divided by three. So 23.3% a year.

Moses warns the people from being tight-fisted in Deuteronomy 15. He says, if there is among you a poor man of your brethren within your gates or within your land, you shall not harden your hearts or shut your hand or be tight-fisted toward your brother." The general basis of this is in Leviticus 27, And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land or of the fruit of the tree is the Lord's. It is holy to the Lord. So he's talking about, what the people did is they brought the produce of their land into the temple and actually they It would be offered as a sacrifice and they would eat it. It was part of part of their offering But the whole idea here in particularly in Leviticus 27, everything comes from God out of his ground that he gave you.

God provided the ground, the rain, the sun, he provided you the strength, and so you should bring it in of whatever you have. Open your Bibles to Exodus chapter 35. Exodus 35. This is a very telling section about giving and how God so designs it to operate in the heart of the believer. Exodus 35 and find verse five.

Exodus 35, five. What you find here is this upwelling of joy to give. The artisans, they're motivated from the heart. It's so beautiful, actually. So Exodus 35 verse five.

Take from among you an offering to the Lord, whoever is of a willing heart. Let him bring it as an offering to the Lord. Gold, silver, and bronze, blue, purple, scarlet thread, fine linen and goat's hair, ram skins dyed red, badger skins and acacia wood, oil for the light and spices for the anointing oil for the sweet incense, onyx stones, I mean he goes on, it's all this bring these beautiful things you know into the storehouse and and and then you know in the next chapter go over to the next chapter 36 In verse 1 you have these artisans, Bezalel and Aholiab, and every gifted artisan whom the Lord has put wisdom and understanding. And look at verse 2, these gifted people's hearts were stirred. God did this.

Then Moses called Bezalel and Aholiab and every gifted artisan in whose heart the Lord had put wisdom. Everyone whose heart was stirred. They were stirred both in wisdom and in generosity at the same time. And I think this is the heart of all giving, the heart stirred before God. And then look at verse three.

They have freewill offerings to supply needs for the work of the service of making the sanctuary. So they continued bringing to him freewill offerings every morning. Then all the craftsmen who were doing all the work of the sanctuary came each from the work he was doing. And then verse 5, some people started complaining. Why?

Why were they complaining? Because they brought too much. They were so generous. They said, hey, this is too much. We can't handle this.

Wouldn't you love to see that in every kind of need and then in verse 6 they they say stop bringing it in So Moses gave a commandment and they caused it to be proclaimed throughout the camp saying let neither man nor woman nor do any more work for the offering of the sanctuary and the people were restrained from bringing. And then in verse seven, it says that it gives the reason they brought too much, it was an overabundant gift. For the material they had was sufficient for all the work to be done. Indeed, too much. Now, hey, these were people who'd been freed from bondage, and now they were giving of what had been given to them.

Do you remember how they got what they had when they left Egypt? The Egyptians gave it to them. Somehow God opened the hearts of the Egyptians and they gave them their resources, their gold and their silver and all kinds of stuff. And the children of Israel actually walk out of Egypt wealthy and now they're giving of their wealth that God gave them. It's really a remarkable narrative.

And then the historical, poetic, and prophetic books, let's turn to that section. You know we've covered that from the beginning in the patriarchal age the the mosaic period now the historical and poetic books and in first Chronicles 29 verses 2 through 17 really speaks of David's generosity because of what God had done. Saint Chronicles 29, 14. But who am I and who are my people that we should be able to offer so willingly as this? Remember they're building the temple.

These are offerings for the building of the temple. And then if skipping down to verse 17, as for me, in the uprightness of my heart, I have willingly offered all these things. And now with joy, oh remember, God loves a cheerful giver. With joy, I have seen your people who are present here to offer willingly to you this you know This matter on the one hand in the Old Covenant The giving was required. It was almost like taxation, but you still have this language of Willingly and you know hearts enlarged and all that that's really the heart of giving and I'm when you get to the New Testament I think that's that's the primary principle, but we'll get there in a minute.

In first Chronicles, in second Chronicles 31, they brought their tithes consecrated to the Lord. Again, this is for the building of the temple. I'll just read a brief verse in second Chronicles 31 verse 6. Also, the tithe of the holy things, which were consecrated to the Lord their God, they laid in heaps. So people, they made the money, or the goods, the oxen, their produce from the ground, whatever they had, and they consecrated it to the Lord.

That's what Christians are to do. Everything is consecrated to the Lord, and they give a piece of it for the worship of God. In Proverbs 3.9 you find another really important principle and that is that you give of the first fruits. Proverbs 3.9, honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of all your increase so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will overflow with new wine we made our kids memorize this when they were three years old but honor the Lord with your possessions and the first fruits of all your increase or all your flocks or all your whatever, whatever you got your increase from and for. In Proverbs 11 24 We learn what happens to the generous soul.

There is one who scatters yet increases more. And there is one who withholds more than is right, but it leads to poverty. Listen to this. The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will also be watered himself. This is just a basic principle.

This is not the fake prosperity gospel of the prosperity gospel preachers, okay? This is the true prosperity gospel of Jesus Christ that God blesses his people Matthew 8 or I'm sorry in Malachi 1 Verses 8 through 10 you have this narrative The people are being corrected because they're offering their worst to the Lord. And Malachi tells them, and when you offer the blind as a sacrifice, is it not evil? In other words, they're bringing the bottom of the barrel, not the top. And when you offer the lame and sick, is it not evil?

Offer it then to your governor. Would he be pleased with you? Oh, so you bring these sick animals to your governor, what's he gonna think? Well, you're bringing them to God, that's the idea. He says, I have no pleasure in you.

In other words, you can be a giver, but God can have no pleasure in you because you really don't love him, you just want to get by with the worst, the bottom of the barrel, the last of what you make, not the first of what you make. Malachi chapter three talks about this as well, not just chapter two. And he uses some language that I think is very helpful. It's the language of bringing the whole tithe into the storehouse. This is a basic principle.

We bring tithes and offerings into the storehouse of the church. Malachi 3 10, bring all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be food in my house and try me now in this says the Lord of hosts. If I will not open to you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it and I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes So that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground Nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field says the Lord of hosts and all nations Will call you blessed for you will be a delightful land says the Lord in Ezra chapter 2 verses 68 and 69 We learned that giving is according to ability. You know, you have the billionaires and the thousandaires, and they're able to give more. Give according to your ability.

It says when they came into the house of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem, and offered freely for the house of God according to their ability they gave to the treasury. You find a very similar situation in Nehemiah chapter 12, Nehemiah chapter 13. They bring the tithe into the storehouse according to the ability of the people. In Haggai chapter one, this is really worth studying, the temple was needing to be rebuilt. They started and then they stopped because of threats from the outside.

And they stopped for, I think it was 16 years, something like that. And Haggai comes back to tell the people, you should start back up, because God is doing a great thing. And then the prophet Zechariah comes and gives a whole prophecy of, look, keep going, because this is where this is all going. This is going to the spread of the gospel to all the nations. That's Zechariah, it's a remarkable prophecy.

But in Haggai, the people were dragging their feet. And the reason they were dragging their feet, well, they were obsessed with their own houses. They were spending all their money on their paneled houses and God says you need to come and spend your money on building the house of God where people can meet and where the sacrifices can be inaugurated again and So this is all in Haggai. You can look at Haggai 1 through 11. Here's what Haggai says in verse 4, Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses and this temple lie in ruins?

Now therefore says the Lord of hosts consider your ways. So the house of God is in ruins, it's dilapidated, it's not built, but their houses are looking really nice. That's the idea. Then he says you know what You have sown much and you bring in little. You eat and you don't have enough.

You drink and you're not filled with drink. You clothe yourselves but no one is warm. And he who earns wages, earns wages to be put in a bag with holes. He says, look, you know, your pocketbooks have holes in them because you're not giving. You're just focusing everything on yourself.

That's Haggai. And then, you know, of course, what God is doing, he's calling these people to largeness of heart. He's calling them to the same generosity that they have received from the Lord. So let's move to the New Testament. When we move to the New Testament, we only encounter the word tithing twice, and it's actually Jesus is rebuking the scribes and the Pharisees for their fakeness and bringing their tithes and offerings.

He says, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, for you pay tithe of Mint and Annas and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law justice and mercy and faith These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone Blind guides who strain out a nap and swallow a camel. In other words, they're going through the motions, they're bringing their ties, blah-bitty-blah-bitty-blah, but they don't care about anybody. The largeness of heart didn't filter down to the way that they treated people. And the weightier matters of the law of justice and mercy and faith, they didn't care about those. They just really kinda cared about the outward religion.

And so The term tithe is used by Jesus twice, but only in that context. Those are representatives of actual hearts that weren't changed, but they were still tithing. And you can find people like that in churches. They still go through the motions, but their hearts aren't in it, really. They're just doing the outward stuff.

So, now, one of the central texts in the New Testament about giving is in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. Two chapters are devoted to this. So open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter eight. And we're gonna just bounce through this section. We won't be able to read it all.

It's a long, long section. 2 Corinthians 8 and find verse 3. This is all about the churches collecting offerings for a persecuted church in terrible need. They'd lost their jobs because of the gospel, they wouldn't offer their pinch of incense to Caesar and say Caesar is Lord, and so now they don't have livelihoods and they're having a really hard time. And so the churches are raising money and Paul's going to Corinth to raise money for these people.

But he talks about how generous they are. It's really beautiful. He says, For I bear witness that according to their ability, and yes beyond their ability, they were freely willing, freely willing. You've heard that language before in the Old Testament. Freely willing, imploring with much urgency that we would receive the gift and the fellowship of the ministering to the Saints and Not only as we had hoped But they first gave themselves to the Lord.

There you go That's the worship of God and then to us by the will of God. And this is a wonderful example of giving that arose out of worship. They gave themselves to the Lord, this generous God, and then they gave of their resources, and they gave above and beyond their ability. And then in verse eight, he says, I speak not by commandment, but I am Testing the sincerity of your love by diligent by the diligence of others for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the foundation of the giving.

You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you, through his poverty might become rich. And then move over to chapter 9, chapter 9 verse 5. I read this at the beginning, Therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren to go to you ahead of time and prepare your generous gift beforehand, which you had previously promised, that it may be ready as a matter of generosity and not as a grudging obligation. Generosity, free will, desire, you know, from the heart, That's the whole idea. And then he says, but this I say, he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly.

This goes back to Malachi. They had holes in their bags because they were sowing sparingly. See, he who sows sparingly will reap sparingly and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. And then verse 7 hits the heart of all giving that you read about in the New Testament. Are you ready for it?

So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver. You know, there's so many phrases in this line that could draw an entire sermon, okay? As he purposes in his heart, this comes from the heart. Not grudgingly, that's a whole nother sermon. And then, or of necessity, in other words, not because somebody's making you do it For God loves a cheerful giver That's I think that's a summary of the doctrine of giving from Genesis to Revelation.

And then there's a promise in verse 8, and God is able to make all grace abound toward you. In other words, if you give cheerfully, not grudgingly, according to the overflow of the generosity that God gave you, then God will make all grace abound toward you. You'll be okay. You'll be okay if you give. That you always having all sufficiency in all things.

In other words, God promises that he will meet your needs. You will have all sufficiency in all things. That you may have an abundance for every good work and then God's generosity is the pattern in verse 9 and he's quoting Psalm 112 he has dispersed abroad he has given to the poor his righteousness endures forever. Psalm 112 starts out like this. Praise the Lord, okay?

Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who delights greatly in his commandments. So this is the person who's delighted in the delights of God, so affected by the generosity of God, And then all these things happen in his life. And the generation of the righteous will be blessed, there are promises about his generation. And there are also promises of what kind of person that he'll be. He will disperse abroad, he'll give to the poor, and his righteousness endures forever.

That's a summary of Psalm 112. Back to 2 Corinthians 9, look at verse 10. Now, May he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness And look at verse 11. We're back to God God the generous God while you are enriched in everything for all liberality which causes thanksgiving through us to God. Verse 12, for the administration of this service not only supplies the needs of the saints, but also is abounding through many thanksgivings to God.

Now in this passage, All giving is based on the generosity of God. And God loves a cheerful giver. And we are more like God when we're generous. There's so much that the New Testament says about money and giving. You know, for example, in 1 Timothy 6 10, Paul, he explains the danger that we're in when it comes to money.

For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. In First Timothy 6, 17, Paul exhorts the rich to be ready to give. We happen to be the richest people on the planet right here in the room. Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God who gives us richly all things to enjoy. There's that generous God again.

Let them do good that they may be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold of eternal life. In Matthew chapter 6 and 19, Jesus, he's actually telling his disciples to deploy their treasures as investments. He says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, but where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. That's the investment. Where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." In Romans chapter 12 verse 13, Paul's telling the Roman Church to distribute their resources to the saints.

He says continuing steadfastly in prayer, distributing to the needs of the saints given to hospitality. In Philippians 419, Paul tells the Philippian church that God will take care of them. He says, and my God shall supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. In Galatians 6, Paul tells that church in Galatia to take care of those who teach financially. He says, let him who is taught the word share in all good things him who teaches.

In 1 Peter 4, 10, he says, each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms. There you go again, This is a steward of God's grace. This is a stewardship of God's generosity We've been given much and so we ought to be like God who's given to us In Matthew 6 1 through 4 Jesus tells us not to give our charitable deeds to be seen by men, to give so that everybody will know how righteous we are. Okay, let's move to some applications here. We're just speaking about the normal practice of the faithful Christian who has been affected by a generous God and who's learning how not to be tight-fisted in spending everything on themselves.

I'll just repeat it again. The first application is giving of tithes and offerings as an act of worship. And that's why the early church collected offerings. That's why in churches all over the world today, they're going to pass a plate. We don't pass a plate here.

There's a box somewhere in this church, it might be back there. And people go give as they desire. Sometimes we thought, maybe we should go back to passing the plate, we did it years, maybe a decade and a half ago, we might have done this, but we've just put a box in the back for a long time. But I don't think that's necessarily the only holy way to do it, because giving is an act of worship. I have a friend who says, I'm not giving electronically, because we write a check and we bring it to the church.

It's an act of worship. But a lot of people don't write checks anymore, so it kind of complicates the matter. But giving of tithes and offerings is an act of worship and we bring, you know, when we encourage people to bring their tithes and offerings on the Lord's Day, it's the concept of bringing all the tithes into the storehouse and then it's distributed. So that's the idea. So when should we give?

Well, obviously regularly. In the Old Testament they brought their offerings on a regular basis. Same thing in the New Testament. Who should give? Every believer should give.

Each one puts something aside. In Leviticus 23, 6 through 8, let none of you appear to me empty-handed. God desires all of his people, from the poorest to the richest, to come and give. And you know, there are reasons that people don't give. They might be ignorant of the fact that giving was designed by God as an act of worship.

They just haven't thought about it. They may have gotten themselves in such a great debt they don't feel they can give. My view is that even if you're in debt, you should start giving and ramp it up as fast as you can. And repent, repent of whatever covetousness that caused you to get there, if that's what it was. Someone might think, well, I don't give to the church because I give to my friends and my family and I just kind of give it around.

That's not actually how the biblical pattern works. There is, I mean, we should be generous to those around us, but that's not the first and primary thing that the Bible talks about. The Bible does talk about giving to those who are in need personally. There should be a lot of that going on, but what some people miss, they misunderstand what the Bible teaches and they say, well I just give to people as I see needs. But they don't bring the whole tithe into the storehouse to be distributed.

I think that's a missing of the point. You know, they may not be giving just simply because they can't afford it. Their budget's too tight. It might be a good time to ask to talk to somebody who's been really good at handling money. You know, don't talk to people who aren't good at handling money.

Talk to people who are good at handling money and They might tell you things that you don't want to hear about how to get your finances back in order How much should we give You must give ten percent I don't think the Bible I don't think the Bible actually teaches that I think that you must give generously and large heartedly out of the abundance of your worship of God and according to your ability and cheerfully. I think there are several qualifications around it. Are you obligated to give 23.3% as they did in the Old Testament? I don't believe that's a number that a New Testament believer has to get dialed in on, but it gives you an idea. It gives you a sense of the kind of generosity that God desires, that you support the work of the ministry, that you support the work of fellowship, and you support the work of the poor.

You have those three things. Now the church handles that in different ways as well. 10% was the beginning of support of the work of the Levites. That was the beginning. That wasn't the ceiling.

That was the floor. That was the start. So let's just talk a little bit more deeply about the tithe. I think that first of all, we should think about first fruits. We give off the top.

We give the beginning. But the Old Testament ceremonial laws, which were very clear about the tithe, give us, I believe they give us principles that are not obligatory in the New Covenant. And our confession, the Baptist Confession of 1689, it makes this very clear. It's chapter 19. And in paragraph three, It speaks about this matter of the ceremonial law.

The ceremonial laws were given to support the worship of God in Israel. And what the Baptist confession is is that God gave Israel ceremonial laws and typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, his graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits. And these ceremonial laws were appointed for that time, but they were abrogated and taken away in the New Covenant. That's what we believe. That's what your elders believe.

But in the ceremonial law, there are principles, there are, There's sort of a general equity of the law that teaches us something about how we should think about something So I believe that the Old Testament tithes teaches us principles about giving. I don't think it's a demand that the New Testament church give 23.3%. There's nothing wrong with that, that would be really nice, but God does love a cheerful giver who's giving abundantly. Out of the overflow of their hearts. In Galatians 3.24 we read that the laws are a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ.

I don't think you can make an airtight case that you have to give 10%. I think you can make a better case that you give a lot more than that. But you've heard these various principles that flow through scripture. Do I have an obligation to tithe? Is it a duty or a privilege and an opportunity?

I think that it's a privilege and an opportunity. Peter says, each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God's grace. You know, there are lots of questions, you know, should we give 10% of our gross income or our net income? Do we just give on our net pay or our gross pay? Does it include after medical insurance or, you know, do you give after what you set aside for retirement you know I don't even I don't know the answers to those questions I don't think the Bible I don't think the Bible answers them.

You know, God wants your whole heart, your whole life, everything that you are and have, and you lay that before Him. And you don't want to end up as a stingy giver, a stingy grudging giver, you know, but a cheerful abundant giver because God is so generous. So God is a generous God and his people's hearts open wide and become large-hearted, the more they know him. It's the Word of God that makes the heart large. So if you want to enlarge your heart, you know how to get it.

It's by the Word of God. But we have such a large-hearted God who saves sinners, who actually supports unworthy people. Are any of us worthy of the support that God has given us? None of us are worthy, but God, he even causes his reign to fall on the just and the unjust. He's that generous.

So all of this to just try to help us to move forward in large heartedness together as a church in every category. You know, why are we doing this? So that the Word of God would shape this church into a church of worshipers who worship God in spirit and in truth and who are reflections of God's great generosity who gives and so we turn and do the same with cheerful hearts, upwelling from the Holy Spirit. So that's how you should give. Would you pray with me?

Lord, we thank you for the beautiful contours of your word, the many hills and mountains they take us over to teach us what's true. We thank you for giving us so much lavish instruction from Genesis all the way to the end of the Bible to teach us how good you are. So Lord, I pray that you would make this congregation even more thankful. Oh, so much more grateful. So much more cheerful in your generosity.

Even today, Lord as we fellowship together. Amen.